Python and virtualbox vs virtualbox-6.1

What's the difference between virtualbox and virtualbox-6.1?

If you added the virtualbox PPA to your system (via /etc/apt/sources.list), you will find that you now have multiple versions of virtualbox available to install.

deb [arch=amd64] http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian focal non-free contrib

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

As viewed in Synaptic Package Manager, you'll see at least three different versions.

What's the difference, and which one should I install?

Other than the slight version number differences, the big difference is what version of python it requires.

Most current installations of Ubuntu have both python2 and python3 installed. Python2 is depreciated.

virtualbox-6.1

• Uses python2.

• Installs python-is-python2, and makes python2 the system default.

python-is-python2:

virtualbox

• Uses python3.

• Replaces python-is-python2 with python-is-python3, and makes python3 the system default.

python-is-python3:

Here, I'm installing the slightly older virtualbox and you can see what happens with the python-is-python* files.

So which virtualbox to install comes down to which version(s) of python that you have installed, and if you have both installed, which one you want as system default.